My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a handheld device would have sounded kind of crazy, but now we're at the point where it's fully supported on more than one vendor's hardware. This seems like it could be a similar play in the traditional desktop space; if they can prove that the concept is viable, maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default. All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows, and if it works out, they wouldn't even necessarily have to continue making hardware indefinitely.
I don't pretend to have any insight into whether this theory is correct beyond that it seems to track with what they've been doing lately, or any expertise to make claims about whether it will work or not. In a lot of ways, this might just be a projection of my desires as a gamer who enjoys not having had to boot into Windows to play something for quite a few years at this point. I do hope that maybe they're just crazy enough to not only try this, but pull it off though!
I don't think this needs to be a theory. Valve regards Microsoft's flirtations with walled gardens (MS Store) as an existential threat. They see their investment into linux gaming as a hedge against future locked down windows OS, which is at this point probably inevitable.
Absolutely. This is a long term strategy stemming from the moment Microsoft spawned their app store.
A lot of people are missing the fact that the Steam Frame is Valve's attempt at staking a position in the wide-open and malleable VR space.
With Google, they identified that Microsoft developing their own search engine as an existential threat. Additionally, Internet Explorer being the only bottleneck for the web as a platform was a problem. And thus they broke it wide open, developing web technologies, investing in Firefox initially, releasing Chrome, and ultimately delivering Android.
In mobile, Microsoft came too late to respond to Apple and Google.
Meta and Apple have identified that VR is one of the next gold-mines in terms of a similar app-store and experience rich ecosystem potential comparable to PCs, web, and mobile, and have poured billions into development of hardware and software. It's documented that Meta attempted to create a proprietary OS for their VR headsets (and has debatable success).
Valve, while having fewer resources than any of the behemoths above, decided to hedge their bets with Linux and entering the market first through their well established brand built with video games. It would not surprise me if the Steam Frame begins their entry into other entertainment experiences and app opportunities. Microsoft has reasonable success weaving their ecosystem together (PC + Xbox), but they're foolish to think that their dominance would continue into VR because they have the PC space... They made that mistake with Windows Phone.
> A lot of people are missing the fact that the Steam Frame is Valve's attempt at staking a position in the wide-open and malleable VR space.
It is their third attempt.
VR has so far failed to reach an amount of people to make developing games for it really worthwhile, and the metaverse really doesnāt have much going for it either.
I donāt really see much momentum in that space, and the consensus among my friends is that itās a gimmick to try a few times - with their vr headsets collecting dust since.
> With Google, they identified that Microsoft developing their own search engine as an existential threat. Additionally, Internet Explorer being the only bottleneck for the web as a platform was a problem. And thus they broke it wide open, developing web technologies, investing in Firefox initially, releasing Chrome, and ultimately delivering Android.
That story ended up with Google supplanting Microsoft as the top market abuser. So I'm holding all my fingers crossed that it doesn't turn out the same with Valve, especially since by the time they get to have a shot at that top position Valve will very likely be under different leadership and maybe with different ideals.
This is 100% it. In addition to MS Store, MS is trying to converge Xbox and Windows, which definitely had the potential to lock out Steam. SteamOS and hardware is 100% a hedge against that. And thankfully for us, Valve is moving quicker than MS.
Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldnāt surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing that.
Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge.
Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.
Yanis Varoufakis?
but games are a niche, nobody in my circle or extended circle plays video games.
I don't think it was explicitly to compete with Microsoft. Gabe explicitly said when the Windows 8 App Store was announced that Valve was going to ensure Microsoft couldn't lock them out of the desktop market. He said Valve benefitted for PC's openness (up until it was threatened).
Microsoft also had Games for Windows Live at the time, which provided similar functionality to parts of Steam (friends, multiplayer, voice chat, achievements), so with that plus the App Store, one could easily see it as Microsoft coming for their market.
> Mr Newell, who worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do.
> He said the success of Valve, known for its Half Life, Left4Dead and Portal titles, had been down to the open nature of the PC.
> "We've been a free rider, and we've been able to benefit from everything that went into PCs and the internet," he told the conference. "And we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms."
> "There's a strong temptation to close the platform," he said, "because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say, 'That's really exciting.'"
If I was going to take on Microsoft I would say a lot of things that were not āIām going to take on Microsoft,ā best not to wake the sleeping giant. You can fix a lot of orgs by attacking them. Also I think Valve is set up as a bit of an anti-Microsoft, a flat(ish?) org structure as opposed to the matrix org structure. Having worked at MSFT I was definitely thinking that these people are going to fumble and a getting into position ready to pick up the ball when that happens might be a good strategy - though clearly a long term one.
Not much of a theory when everything you described has already happened.
Didn't Gabe Newell basically confirm 13 years ago already that they were aiming for that ?
I'd love to be confident that the company's strategy is sound enough to keep the same long-term goals from that far back, but I don't think I'm sure enough to make strong assumptions about what the overall motivations of products launched in 2025 are from his comments in 2012. I do think that it's a plausible explanation, but there's plenty of room for humility in attempting to interpret whether intent has changed in the light of over a decade of new circumstances that may or may not have been expected.
Thatās how privately owned companies with BDFL founders still running them operate.
No shareholders. No dopey stock market magazine articles. No quarterly ādid you make the line go up? why not?ā reports. You can execute on a 10 or 20 or 50 year vision when youre beholden to only your customers, your staff, and yourself and not a pack of rabid wolves.
2013: "Linux and open source are the future of gaming" https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-linux-and-open-source-ar...
SteamOS was released in that year as well: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/commit/0aad7085a1a9...
All of their hardware released since then seems to be aligned with this concept and they have clearly put a huge amount of R&D and funding into this approach.
> Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
I'm so happy to read this
Valve respects its customers. It is so insane that this isn't a norm; what a world we would be in if all companies did so.
Gabe is literally practising Noblesse Oblige, which is really funny but really shows that our billionare society is really just a reduction to old aristocracy. He's just the good Duke, whereas most Dukes are horrible, horrible people.
Noblesse oblige exists because of a moral economy. You can be a horrible Duke, because there's no real reward for being the good one.
This is not that - Steam has to compete on the free market, there is a reward for making the product everyone else refuses to make. In a post-Deck world, it's hard to believe that moral obligation plays a bigger role than the overall hatred of Windows for seamless gaming experiences.
>He's just the good Duke
The Gaben house is building a secret army, using a technique unknown to us; a technique involving steam.
Gamers are a passionate bunch. Screwing around with them is a losing game that no one has historically ever won. And also because a lot of their competitors fucked up to pave the road for them (Think Sony's PS fiasco, Microsoft's X-Box clusterfuck from which they're yet to recover from, a decade later). Valve has gotten alot of billion dollar lessons in here that Valve got for free.
> Screwing around with them is a losing game that no one has historically ever won.
What universe do you live in?
- Broken games still pre-ordered
- marginal updates sold at full price
- double/triple-dipping with microtransactions and battle passes
- DRM still [predominant and still hurts performance
- every publisher with more than one game has their own launcher (usually shitty and brings no value)
- rootkit as anti-cheat
- offline game that require online connectivety
- online services get shutdown
- LAN multiplayer is a thing of a past
What did games exactly won?
- Paid skyrim mods? It's back.
- MS game sharing thing that rendered GameStop business model useless? IMO a mistake, MS was onto something there.
> . Screwing around with them is a losing game that no one has historically ever won
DRM is everywhere so gamers have clearly lost
The PlayStation seems pretty successful, not sure what "PS fiasco" you're referring to. The stock price is doing fine, at any rate
We live in the live service microtransaction era. Gamers have proven as resolute as wet tissue.
Don't sugarcoat it. Valve has to make sure this is advertised as a PC to keep the licensing good on the games you've bought and that they are allowed to sell. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have closed ecosystems with their consoles. Well, Microsoft seems to be throwing in the towel on consoles.
> keep the licensing good
Thatās an imaginary issue.
Didn't Xbox pivot to be an entertainment system a couple generations ago and flop compared to PlayStation?
> Well, Microsoft seems to be throwing in the towel on consoles.
Can you expand on this? I'm not a massive gamer, I thought xbox was doing well?
This could be restated as: open systems mean you don't need a tangled web of partnerships to provide content, and Valve is taking advantage of this.
>> Valve respects its customers.
That's the same Valve that doesn't let me play the games I paid it for unless they are running on its platform? That's how it "respects" me?
To be fair there are a lot of games on Steam that don't have DRM, which means you can just drag them out of the steamapps folder to a computer that doesn't have Steam and they work fine. The decision to add DRM comes from the developer/publisher, not Valve.
Name a game distribution platform that doesn't do this. It will be a toy example like a zip file purchased off of itch.io or something.
I think that's more a situation where publishers demand some form of DRM so steam is trying to provide a default solution that most publishers are happy with.
DRM is optional on Steam and up to the game developer.
Me, too. I've been meaning to upgrade my HTPC for years, but I kept holding off because I had hoped that NVIDIA would release a new ShieldTV (the last one used the same chip as the Switch, so the community had quietly hoped that the Switch 2's release would coincide with a new Shield--no such luck). Assuming the Steam Machine is reasonably priced, I could easily see it also becoming my new Kodi box when not gaming on it.
If the Steam Machine sufficiently supports the DRM required for apps from Netflix, AppleTV, etc, it would definitely be a good option for that. As it is, my SO still likes the apps, though the actual subscriptions have been rotating a bit.
Have you considered dear
it's so refreshing to read something like that from a big company, it's weird, but felt like there's still hope? that there's people in power that still care? strange feeling, still curious about it
the last few in years in tech have been depressing, like no one cares to make something that's actually better for the consumer, it's made me into a cynic and I hate it
>that there's people in power that still care? strange feeling, still curious about it
One day, Gabe Newell will die. Maybe his racer son will inherit the job, or maybe he'll delegate the job. Maybe this new CEO will take Valve public to ensure they get a centi-million dollar payout.
Then all the good times end. This is the halcyon for Steam customers.
While true, at least Gabe proved you could make a profit while still remaining non-evil.
All good things must come to an end.
centi = 10^-2
Valve is a private company. I'm not going to say that every public company lacks a product focus, but I think there is a danger in public companies where it becomes natural to promote MBA's over product and even sales roles. I know MBA is treated with hatred here, but I don't think they are necessarily bad or evil, but I do think they have an advantage in obtaining power naturally because it's basically their profession and espesially product people are often bad at corporate politics.
In many public companies there is the added level of investor interest, and it can often be a challenge for the C levels to remain in power during periods of slow or even negative growth. Challenges that companies like Valve simply don't have as long as the CEO is fine with it. On the flip side, I'm happy with my own stock portfolio so there is that.
The problem is that public companies have different incentives. They take a more short term views.
Their shareholders are not in it for the long term. Investment managers tend to look at anything more than two years as "long term", and they are conscious of their position in annual league tables.
Even private equity and venture capital are usually going to be thinking about the value at which they can exit reasonably soon.
The management of the company will be thinking about bonuses and options they get between now and when they move to the next job.
A private company can often take the view that what really matters is how much they will be making in five or ten years time. Maybe even how much it will be worth when the current shareholderās kids inherit it. The management are often either owners, or are closely monitored by the owners.
MBAs need to read this: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/10/15/pathe...
tldr; GTFO!
Turns out that a company that is not publicly traded and run by people that only care about stock prices, can actually care about their customers.
There's all sorts of things you can do if you don't care about money.
The more interesting point is that if you aren't driven by investors to care about short term financial stuff (stock prices) then you can make long term decisions. Caring about your customers is a classic one for this - costs you money in the short term, but in the long term gets you a great customer base.
They care about money. They definitely care about money. They have achieved a steady cash flow that can sustain their business forever, unless something really bad happens.
What they don't care is the endless growth that MBA guys always try to achieve, and the quarterly profit driven decision making that ultimately destroys their customers loyalty, for short term profit.
A business can be very profitable without being exploitative. It's the people in Wall Street who can't seem to understand this. For them a hundred million dollars of profit is good if last year it was only fifty million dollars, and a dying business if last year it was also a hundred million dollars. It really makes no sense.
Or if you're the underdog and are looking for a competitive advantage in this market. (Just being cynical.)
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe [1]
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a SnapdragonĀ® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
[1] Steam Frame, which is the VR Headset releasing alongside the Steam Machine. Dedicated discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Valve has been quietly working on integrating the FEX x86 emulator into Proton for a while, and it's official now.
https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/han...
I believe this work is a continuation of the work the asahi linux people did to get games working on M-series macs. It seems Alyssa Rosenzweig works at valve as a contractor. Super cool work. Some seriously talented folks.
Alyssa works for Intel now, so I doubt she'll be doing much contract work for Valve anymore...
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1493
This is fun, just found this issue from 2018 which was closed with this comment:
> Hello @setsunati, this is not a realistic objective for Proton. As @rkfg, mentions wine for ARM does not magically make x86 based games work on ARM cpus.
> Even if Steam were brought to ARM, and an x86 emulation layer was run underneath wine, the amount of games that could run fast and without hitting video driver quirks is small enough not to entertain this idea any time in the near future.
It's mentioned in this issue https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8136 which was closed Oct 2024 with this comment by kisak-valve:
> Hello @Theleafir1, similar to #1493, this is not a realistic objective for Proton any time in the near future.
Finally some clarification on what valve time actually is.
Valve deciding to support Arm-based gaming is HUGE news
There was also a parallel effort to this end, targeting Android rather than plain Linux, resulting in an app called https://winlator.org/ ā which also works quite well at this point. (See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0yUqcyY18)
That was a very higher quality YT video. It's clearly written by someone who knows when they're talking about even though it's mostly non-technical
nowadays FEX works better than box86 in my experience, on 'desktop' linux at least
Just to clarify that's for the Steam Frame VR Headset. The Steam Machine PC uses an AMD Zen 4 x86 CPU.
The headset isn't natively running games, right?
It can, but it'll be a small subset of stuff. You'll probably be able to just hit install + play on most things, but it'll have a "Steam Frame Verified" program like the Steam Deck's.
Yes, in the same way that a Quest 3 can run BeatSaber and other similar calibre games.
For more demanding games it's designed to stream from a PC.
Wow this looks great. Foveated streaming, great resolution, wireless, 144hz, looks much more comfortable... As much as I want this, I feel like it'll end up being a really cool thing that just sits on the shelf.
Edit: foveated streaming, not rendering
It looks good until I reached one bit:
> Passthrough - Monochrome passthrough via outward facing cameras
This is an outright bone-headed move that I can't believe Valve is making. Only having monochrome cameras means augmented reality is basically a non-starter.
AR has a lot of potential. I literally bought a Meta Quest 3 just for PianoVision [0] when I already had a Valve Index. I would love to see some sort of AR-based game you could play outdoors. But with only monochrome vision, that's gonna be awful.
The videos I've seen about the Frame all call out the front expansion port, which "Valve says ... offers a dual 2.5Gbps MIPI camera interface and also supports a one-lane Gen 4 PCIe data port for other peripherals."[1]
That's plenty to support color passthrough as a physical addon, which in turn makes me think that, like with the OLED Deck, we'll see a Frame with built-in color-passthrough later as a different premium SKU when/if they justify it.
1: https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-official-announce...
AR is really cool but it seems like a better fit for premium VR headsets right now. At a given price and assuming other specs are fixed, monochrome cameras offer higher refresh rate. I'm hoping this will help the frame offer better tracking.
Sad fact is that nobody outside tiny niche-cases in engineering really gives a shit about XR. The current round of meta-branded glasses don't have features worth the price.
When it's light & small enough to be a pair of glasses and more than just the expensive but limited gimmick that the form is currently, then it'll be world-changing. It's close, but it's not there yet.
To be fair, I have zero interest in AR so I am glad I will not have to pay for it when buying the headset.
PianoVision sounds like a really bad way to learn the piano. There are already pianos/midi controller that have the abilities to light up the keys you are supposed to play if you really needed that. But that is a gimmick that you might use the first few sessions and then never again. Same with PianoVision.
Generally, is is so much better to start with music notation from day one. I regret starting with all the piano learning apps because they only have been holding me back.
I recommend preparing a drink or two and loading up VRchat and joining one of the rave club groups. Check out the metaverse zuck wishes he ran.
VRChat is one of the most socially dysfunctional online platforms I've ever used
I could see Steam creating the OASIS
I tried VRChat once or twice but never seemed to have found any fun places/groups to hang out that weren't obsessing about anime/manga most of the time. Anyone here on HN have better suggestions of worlds/groups or where to even look?
My NVIDIA Shield is getting old and slow. I can see this as a good replacement, because it supports HDMI CEC, so you can control it with your remote control.
Install Plex, JellyFin, FreeTube et.al. to it and you have a nice open source TV box.
You also get 4k gaming from Steam, GOG, Epic etc. and you get emulators. I've been wanting to build a computer like this, but CEC is hard to find and the adapters that exist don't support full 4k resolution.
The specs for this steam machine say HDMI 2.0, in the past I used a pulse8 HDMI CEC USB dongle with a computer which was also HDMI 2.0 iirc. I was using a 1080p projector with it but their website claims 4k support: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter
I recently replaced a shield with an Ugoos Am6b+ running coreELEC, which works okay and supports some stuff the shield doesn't but I miss being able to run some android apps easily. I wonder if the new steam machine will support DV.
Maybe they've cracked the code with the dongle? Usually, you either have to invest both time and money into setting up the perfect streaming network, deal with annoying cables or resign yourself to inferior on-device game versions. The ergonomics matter more than you'd think.
But if it's a very easy plug-n-play type deal to run SteamVR games (and on Linux!), that's a huge ergonomic improvement. Don't have to think too much about whether everything is running correctly or what-have-you.
If it's just plug and play and works well, it'd be brilliant. I have experimented a lot with a couple or wifi dongles I had lying around and setting up a hotspot, but honestly I could never get it to work well.
Streaming VR content is just so sensitive. I have a good cabled network but even a simple switch introduced noticeable lag spikes. In the end I have a separate router that I just connect straight to my PC, and then I share my wifi connection through my PC to that network. A whole silly setup just to minimize latency and packet loss. If that could be replaced with a simple USB dongle I'd be amazed.
Bought another AP to use on 6ghz band, still alone there, works perfectly for my oculus. If they can do it with a dongle that would make it much simpler for regular people.
> So Steam + Proton works on aarch64?
CodeWeavers just announced[0] CrossOver on ARM a couple of days ago, so yes.
[0]: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-ou...
Mainly check out the Valve-sponsored FEX project.
Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'd care about from a desktop computer.
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
Like other commenters, I also recently made the switch. Figured I would dual-boot windows but have never needed to boot it back up again.
ProtonDB is a goldmine when a game doesn't work. Oh, and switching from Nvidia GPU to AMD GPU seems to have worked great to get games to "just work".
one limitation for Bazzite for instance would be some titles that require anti-cheating won't work but just like OP, only use case I have for windows is gaming and running some banking app which won't work on non-Windows device
love to see more and more users realize they can game just fine on linux
It's time to stop buying such games and send game studios a signal that we won't tolerate rootkits and/or closed platforms. Anti-cheats should run server-side, or better yet, servers should be community-operated. I would probably bought BF6, but since I exclusively use Arch, EA lost a sale -- too bad for them there are thousands of other games that work flawlessly on Linux.
I was in the same shoes, then one day I decided to give a shot to Bazzite. To my surprise the installation was extremely smooth, and everything worked right away. Now Iām playing almost everything on it (Arc Raiders, EU V, HLL and Horizon FW recently). If you want to _try_ all you need is 15 minutes, some HDD space and an empty USB. You donāt have to give up Windows at all, dual booting is also pretty smooth.
Gaming on Linux is hit and miss, depending on the distro you use and your desktop environment. Some games should be launched with gamescope if you are using Gnome/GDM
To have HellDivers run in borderless window on Debian 14. It required me to manually compile gamescope (wasn't that difficult but Valve's instructions are out of date), and use the backports on Trixie to upgrade the kernel to 6.16, and update wireplumber and pipewire (sound was flakey on some games). Kernel 6.16 performs much better than 6.12 just generally.
All the Arkham games work perfectly. Doom Eternal has some weird latency in the mouse and aiming doesn't feel right.
I could never get my Xbox One bluetooth controller behaving with Linux. I ended buying a 8bitdo Xbox style controller which works perfectly. It is much better made than the Xbox controller and roughly the same price.
A few games I've tried required a little fiddling to work correctly. Some of these, like Dark Souls, required me to get a Windows patcher to run in linux to patch a windows binary, which required me to launch the patcher from Proton in Steam, and know where Steam installed the game. Not straightforward at all, but it can be done. I would not call it an experience for the average Windows gamer.
Some of the latest shooters, will get you banned because anti-cheat.
That said, there's nothing in my library (180 games!) that doesn't run in Linux, and I have a number of games that you can't even get to run in Windows at all anymore.
I think the gaming community should all send Gabe Newell a Valentines Day card, or maybe a Christmas gift, or something. Seriously, the man has done so much for gaming, think of where we'd be without him. Windows App Store, Sony Game Store, walled gardens...
That's why the correct choice is Bazzite
So to be fair about Helldivers, it doesn't even reliably work on Windows.
I have to install a two year old AMD driver to get Helldivers to recognize my GPU.
I have a bazzite box connected behind my TV. Even with a non optimal choice of graphic card (an old Nvidia) it works better than I was expecting.
I also bit the bullet and did a bazzite install and am blown away how seamless it has been for what I need. All the games I like run on Steam. Even Diablo 4 runs through the Blizzard launcher which does take some work to get installed, but nothing you can't find in a youtube video.
No issues using the system as my daily driver for personal things. I have dual monitors, one oriented vertically and one 144hz. All works great! I'd recommend it to anyone
Loved the concept, tried it out, didn't work, at least not for RDR2 which I was trying to play. But how would it work, there is Linux, Bazzite, then there is Steam, RDR2 needs the Rockstar launcher, it's such an intricate web of dependencies, I'm not surprised something isn't working.
RDR2 has a gold rating: https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180
It should work with some tinkering.
When silly DRM or a game launcher is all that is keeping you from enjoying a game, that is when you get the pirated version without any of this bs and enjoy it without remorse.
I have finished RDR2 on Bazzite (story mode), zero issues.
RDR2 works great on my AMD Linux machine.
How's the Nvidia driver support in Bazzite?
> If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
SteamDeck is out since February 2022 and does all that. You can use a BT mouse&keyboard, plug a USB-C screen or dongle for HDMI. I did live presentations with that quite a few time. It's just a computer with another form factor.
It's not "dangerously close", it's been there for years now.
Basically only competitive gaming with kernel level anti-cheat are problematic.
The thing that makes that different though is the packing/unpacking experience. With a laptop it's just... opening and closing the lid. With a steam deck (or really any mini PC with a screen and battery), if you go wireless as you suggest, there's now at least 3 devices (deck, KB, mouse) that need to be handled and charged separately. Given my previous negative experiences with BT I'd go wired but that makes every move take even more effort.
I could see a setup with a case for the deck gives it a laptop form factor, but that doesn't seem like what you're suggesting. I might also ask how often you move your setup? My schedule requires I do so at least 8 times/week.
seconding this. I bought a SteamDeck OLED -- and it blows my mind more people havent heard about these. it's essentially a bad ass handheld laptop. yes it plays games great, but the OS side when you boot into desktop mode is quite capable - I spend more time on it than my home pc these days
A Uperfect lapdock with a USB-C PD injector from one of the AR glasses sets (can be bought separately) is even more convenient for Deck as a laptop replacement.
I used to also have a dedicated Windows machine just for gaming, but two years ago I formatted the Windows drive and put SteamOS (via ChimeraOS) instead. I can legitimately say that it has been more stable than running the same games on Windows. Just flawless.
now with gabecube, maybe steamos would be directly available for desktop too
In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls)
In my dream world, hardware enthusiasts would be constantly creating absolutely crazy game controllers with bizarre combinations of inputs that look nothing like an xbox 360 controller. There'd be a universal input protocol that would allow for self-describing gamepads with arbitrary numbers of digital buttons, analog sticks and triggers, touchpads, mouse inputs, haptics, gyro sensors, levers, sliders, wheels, etc. etc.
I realize this may not be practical, but it's kind of weird that PCs have been more or less stuck with a protocol designed for XBox 360 controllers for 2 decades now, while the locked-down console space is seeing much more experimentation and innovation around input. The original steam controller at least hinted at being sort of an open platform for this sort of thing, although it didn't really take off. Fingers crossed for the new version.
It's because the two-thumbstick, 8 face buttons, 2 shoulder and 2 trigger form factor covers so many games there's not been a real reason for super wacky controllers. They kind of hit it out of the park on the 360 design and the only real sticking point left is the exact ergonomics which mostly fall into the PS thumbstick position (both lower) vs XBox position (left high and right low).
One big reason would be that the 360 controller was when they first made it standard USB to connect, and introduced Xinput with the standard set of inputs for games to target. I expect most gamers wouldn't find it pleasant if they had to assign buttons and axis before the joypad would be active/useful, then hitting play and trying to remember what JOY_5 mapped to as used to be needed with directinput.
The Xbox controller doesn't even have a gyro. Xbox controller design is completely stagnant.
USB HID actually works pretty much how you describe, for instance a Physical Descriptor can contain metadata about which body part a button/control is supposed to be used with.
It's extremely complicated however (like many things USB), which is probably why everything just emulates an XBox 360 controller like you said.
It's related to XInput making that easier option on Windows, from my understanding.
Especially if you supported both XBox and Windows.
So the only complex HID game controllers are for very much enthusiast setups, which are rare enough to trip things like absurd assumptions in HID drivers in some systems (the joystick+throttle I have used to break linux HID driver because someone decided to statically allocate possible amounts of joystick buttons per device...)
I'm happy we stumbled into in a state where you can buy a controller and plug it into your computer and it'll likely work hassle-free with basically all of your games. And I think that's what most people care about, more than being able to use wacky controllers with extra buttons.
Hell, configuring my own controls for a game is one of my least favorite things to do. I haven't even played the game yet, I don't know what button should do what!
The way it is, the devs know what kind of controller everyone will likely be using, they can figure out their ideal mapping for how the buttons should be used, and we all have an easy time using our controllers.
Maybe with 10 fingers' budget, considering that at least three per side must hold the device, it's the most rational setup to allow for reaching two directional pucks and some buttons?
It looks way too chunky, just like the original Steam Controller, Steam Deck or original duke Xbox controller. Not everybody has Jack Reacher hands.
Microsoft really did it right with the XSX controller. They took the old X360 / Xone design (perfect for large and medium hands) shrunk it slightly and then added cut-outs and and angled button surfaces (perfect for medium and small hands). The Elite is similarly good, with the back buttons being elongated and thin, meaning everyone can reach them comfortably without them getting in the way.
I own a steam controller and have been using it for multiple years. It's actually really comfortable with the way it sits in my hand. Far more comfortable than whatever sony had going on with the PS4 dualsense stuff
My kids have been using the steam deck since they were 3 years old. Granted, their hands were a bit too small but the Deck is way more manageable than it appears.
You do not need big hands to use a classic steam controller, you just need to shift your grip. It's actually hard to use a steam controller with big hands. With long thumbs, the proper grip doesn't land your thumbs in the middle of the track pads.
Failing to better communicate the proper grip for the steam controller was a real fuck up on valve's part though. They should have tried to communicate it through design, making it harder to hold wrong.
I am kind of concerned about the size of the new controller, but valve seems to have decided there's no place in the market for a controller without sticks.
As someone who has big hands (not chunky, just long fingers), I find the Steam Deck sooo comfortable and satisfying to hold. I still use my Nintendo Switch from time to time, but holding it now feels like it was designed for a child (which it was!).
SInput recently released and got supported by SDL, which plenty of games, but also Steam Input uses. So you can already use SInput in Steam Input. Better than XInput for sure.
https://docs.handheldlegend.com/s/sinput/doc/sinput-hid-prot...
I don't think Steam has ever published specs for their protocol. And without Steam, their old controller would fallback to a mouse/keyboard mode. The Linux kernel drivers (that didn't require Steam) were reverse engineered. Hori released a Steam Controller recently. Even that still had an XInput fallback switch.
I love my OG steam controller still. I can't tell if this new one has the dual stage triggers like the og (like if there's an additional click on full trigger pull).
I used that to set things like boost in rocket League and it felt super intuitive.
First thing I checked for! I feel like it's such a niche feature but also distinctive. It's actually a "necessity" for a proper Gamecube emulation experience, which has the two stage shoulder buttons.
Like you, I also used this for boost on Rocket League and it was surprisingly intuitive. You can map it to the triggers lowest threshold to emulate it but without the tactile bump to rest against it just won't work.
According to digital foundry it does have dual stage triggers
Praise Gaben. That's the one thing I've needed in any replacement Steam Controller and Valve finally did it before the last of my OG Controllers gave up the ghost.
SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004.
On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many millions of Minecraft players who never even launched Fortnight. And DOTA2/LOL players who've never launched either of those 2. And then you see a bunch of indie titles selling tens of millions of copies, and their player base is completely unrelated to those above.
The days of the gaming mono-culture are long gone, and inability to play a limited number of Game As A Service titles is not as severe of a handicap anymore, especially since people who play those kinds of games aren't typically as interested in any other titles. For better or worse, peer pressure doesn't work as heavy these days, as it used to
I was a heavy gamer in 2004 and never played HL2 or DOOM3. I know many such people. I think games like Mario party, smash, and Mario kart were far more ubiquitous.
That just sounds like all you had access to was a Nintendo console, not necessarily due to your own choice. I missed out on all the early zelda, metroid, and mario home console games because we were a playstation family until the wii.
I played plenty of PC games such as Warcraft, StarCraft, and random stuff on steam. I was just not much into FPS (although TF2 was an exception). I also had all 3 consoles (all of my teenage paychecks went into games), but I think it was really Nintendo games which were commonly played by everyone I knew. Even if you didn't have one you'd play them via local multiplayer at someone's house.
Saying āeveryoneā played those two titles is still incorrect. Personally I think the landscape was more fragmented then.
Until the 2010s, PC gaming was fairly niche in US/Canada. Growing up I didn't personally know anyone that gamed primarily on a PC.
I feel like it was when Minecraft took off that people started investing in gaming PCs, kids were asking their parents for them, etc.
Your definition of heavy gamer I think differs from the norm if your main plays were Mario kart, et al.
Yeah, I am pretty sure most heavy gamers in 2004 were knee deep into MMOs and FPSes.
What made you go with comparing things to 2004? Seems random, there is so much that is different in the Linux ecosystem generally, Valve just put the situation on a rocket and shot it into space.
Point taken, it really is marvelous! When I was running Gentoo Linux, and Windows 2000 back then I never thought things would be so portable and simple!
> What made you go with comparing things to 2004?
I guess HL2 release?
Steam launch was late 2003 and first non-valve Steam games appeared in 2005, so "thereabouts" can be a reason as well for "Valve era"
> the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside
It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.
More likely is that some linux distro like SteamOS gets a large enough install base that it actually makes sense as a target and these big platforms make their anti-cheat work on at least that distro. As unfortunate as it is not having a very strong anti-cheat or a system like Valve's VAC ban to detect and lock cheaters out leads to really shitty online experiences in public lobbies for PVP games.
Some anti cheat works with proton if the game dev allows it. But anti cheats are generally not effective on Linux because you can just load your cheat as a kernel driver.
Your comparisons are a mess.
"Casual player" is very poorly defined.
You are comparing concurrent players with unique players (IIRC half a billion for Fortnite ?)
"Many millions" hardly means anything when you use it to cover 3 orders of magnitude.
And so on and so forth...
"Steam Machineās pricing is comparable to a PC with similar specs" [0]
It has to be no more than 800ā¬ then if it also wants to compete against the console market.
Even 800ā¬ is too much imo because looking at the specs it's already not a "future proof" build, more like a previous gen gaming laptop
0, https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...
Unfortunately given the fact that RAM and SSD prices are going through the roof coupled with the fact that a CPU like that alone will be near 150-200 at retail this thing is going to likely cost more.
The console makers have avoided these price increases by mass producing the same sku for a while now. If stocks last into 2027 they will likely remain the same price. If they don't I imagine the console prices might jump a bit too.
It is basically a amd 7640u with a 7600m glued on. All together and subsidized by the store, there is no reason to think this will be more than $600, likely closer to $500.
600ā¬ is top I would pay for this, and even then the HDMI 2.0 sucks. I get that it's a linux/amd issue with HDMI licensing but it still sucks for a media center when most TVs these days support 4k/120 VRR.
I really like the controller, I think I'll pass on the device and just stream from my PC to TV.
Digital foundry have confirmed it supports 4K/120 VRR. It's actually beyond the HDMI 2.0 spec, but not listed as 2.1 as it misses out on some obscure features of the spec. Doubtful you'd get 4K 120p on too many contemporary titles with this hardware configuration though.
Wow, the heat sink takes up most of the internal space!
Having a single big fan cool a massive heatsink (that is hopefully very quiet) can legitimately a good reason to get this over building a typical SFF PC, which often runs hot and loud. It sorta reminds me of the trashcan Mac Pro. I myself have a sandwich style case with an RTX 5070 in it which is quite loud under load.
Yep, look at Mac Studio.
Honestly I'd love to see the trashcan come back, perhaps an entirely new design but still paying homage.
Very weird USB-C port placement choices...
- 2 USB3-A on the front
- 2 USB2-A on the back
- 1 USB-C on the back
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
Valve / Steam presumably has good data on what controllers and peripherals people are using, so I'd imagine their port choices are based around that. Here's a June 2024 post talking about Steam Input and controller market share: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail... . At the time of the post they say "59% of sessions are using Xbox controllers, 26% are using PlayStation controllers, 10% are on Steam Decks"
Steam input controller says nothing about the interface being used (USB A vs USB C). A single USB C (with DP support, I hope) port in 2026 sounds like a bad design.
Almost everyone is using these controllers wirelessly if I had to hazard a guess.
The USB interface is used for initial pairing and charging, in which case the port location doesn't matter nearly as much.
People know that USB hubs exist and are inexpensive right?
Most gaming peripherals still seem to use USB-A on the computer end for cables and dongles.
Current Xbox and PS5 controllers charge with a USB-C port on the controller end but a USB-A port where the plug into the console.
Because think they need to be backward compatible with decade old peripheral controllers. People tend to get grumpy about this. Yet nobody flinched when XBox ditched KinectV2 with Series S/X.
For PC's people are used to adapters. And USB-C is superior in every way.
A self declared general compute device should have a least two USB-C outs that can drive displays.
For 2026 (12 years into USB-C spec) I would expect a minimum of 2 3.2 capable fully wired USB-C ports.
Even better something newer that could do near 40GBpS or better. Like USB Gen 3Ć2
(Written on usb keyboard connected to 4k monitor that also charges the MBP it's plugged in)
For controllers you can use any cable you want. The Xbox controller will charge just fine on a C-C cable. I don't think they should have gone all in on USB-C like laptops have, but there should have been more than one USB-C and one should have been on the front. Pretty much the only thing you need USB-A for these days is mice/keyboard with non removable cables. Which are becoming increasingly rare.
Of course you can swap cables or adapt. I was taking about the cables these devices come with.
Iām all about the USB-C lifestyle but PC gaming peripherals are still pretty dominated by USB-A.
The slim PS5 uses USB-C on both ends.
What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.
I can download at approximately 2.5 Gbps from Steam on my PC.
I think not having a 2.5 gigabit port at least is a poor choice.
there is almost no one who has multigigabit internet and even for people that do, you spend significantly less than 1 percent of your time on that device downloading. its a complete non issue. this device is a midrange at best pc, so having a gigabit connection is exactly where it should be. if you want to have the best of the best build a pc.
So you can theoretically download an AAA title like the new kingdom come at 84GB in just under 5 minutes instead of 11 min. That's cool and all, but does it actually matter? I mean, with games of those sizes you're going to spend hundreds of hours in the game most likely. It's an extremely first world problem that takes minutes, maybe once a month.
A USB 2.5Gb adapter costs $15 on Amazon.
> And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally
Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?
The highest bitrate UHD Blu-ray supports is 144mbit/s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray. A one gigabit NIC is not even close to the biggest compromise on this system.
"the average bitrate for a 4K Blu-ray DVD can range between 48Mbps to 75Mbps. Some discs can also carry around 100Mbps or even 128Mbps, but these are more rare."
https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/forget-streaming-services-here...
The extreme high quality blurays are going up to 144Mbps or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray Still nowhere near a gigabit.
Even on the high seas the large Blu-ray releases require only about 40-50Mbit, maybe you can get even larger releases (requiring ~100Mbit for streaming) but then a single movie would take up 100GB+ of space and it is such an overkill, no one really needs it.
Games are super large nowadays. IIRC Steam uses P2P for the update downloads, so you should be able to saturate whatever link you have, and the SSD should be substantially faster than 1Gbps. So anyone that has a > 1Gbps internet connection should benefit from something higher than Gigabit.
How are downloads bottlenecked by drives? A normal nvme drive does >20 gbit.
You'd be wrong C to A is still pretty standard for controllers in my experience.
As for gigabit fewer and fewer people have ethernet routed to their office/TV area much less >1gig networking to take advantage of anything better than a 1 gig.
I agree that gigabit Ethernet is adequate for the type of product this is. But I do find it funny that the Wifi chip on this is very likely capable of 2Gbit. We somehow entered a world where WiFi is typically faster than Ethernet.
What do you mean some how?
Most people can't or wont retrofit their homes with wired networking. Those that did in the last couple decades likely used cat5/e.
The demand in the consumer space definitely favours advances in wifi.
mmm ...let's agree to disagree
I wired my whole place with 10Gb - couldn't do it in the wall (as in, hidden) so I have flat cables around the door frame and wall corners. I was willing to accept the cables, just to get 10Gb.
And, IMHO, it's worth it.
Not sure what we're disagreeing about, I'm not saying it's not a useful thing to have just that most people don't have it and don't intend to have it so it's not a useful spec bump for Valve to spend money on.
I'm personally planning on going through the pain to get ethernet run (luckily I have both a basement and an attic so it should be fairly easy) in my house and if I ever build new there will be whatever is the best standard at the time in the walls (and maybe some dark fiber but I'm less sure on that) but I also know I'm a vast minority of users at the same time. I'm also in a pretty big minority having a >1 gig symmetrical pipe into my house to make a 10 gig connection to my devices actually worth while.
Personally I'd never go for 10g copper, just run some fibre back to your cupboard.
For APs sure, do copper for POE, but not for computers. I doubt APs will need >1G in practical places for the next decade, and I don't think 10g does poe anyway (maybe 2.5g does)
The steam controller also revealed has a USB-C, as does Hori's official steam controller.
However, you can charge it from things that aren't USB ports. Charging bricks are cheap and most people have one for their phone now, except some unfortunate old iPhone users
Yes but the cord it comes with will likely be a C to A cable. A lot of controllers have come with USB-C ports on them now but ship with C to A cables. Microsoft, Sony, 8Bitdo; all controllers I've gotten that have a C port but came with the usb-a for the PC/charger end.
I feel like part of the problem with going beyond gigabit Ethernet is that copper beyond 1 gigabit is expensive with limited adoption. SFP+ fiber is superior and not even expensive any more, but there's no consumer adoption.
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